In cellphone wars, movie chain uses a violator's words

Friday

The Alamo Drafthouse movie chain kicks out anyone who talks or texts in its theaters. A young woman given the heave left a rude, yet riveting, voice mail.

BRANDS increasingly monitor the Internet for negative product reviews, and contact reviewers to remedy complaints, persuading some to revise reviews with higher ratings.

But when Tim League, the chief executive of Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, a movie chain based in Austin, received an irate voice mail message from a young woman recently, he did not want to change her opinion.

He wanted to publicize it.

The caller had been ejected from a movie for texting, violating a prohibition against using mobile devices underscored in videos shown before movies, and Mr. League decided that the phone message was fodder for yet another public service announcement.

“At the Alamo Drafthouse, we have a simple rule: If you talk or text during a movie, we kick you out,” says screen text that begins the resulting video, which currently is being shown at theaters and was posted to YouTube on June 3. “What follows is an actual voice mail a customer left us after being kicked out.”

In the message, the caller, who is not identified, asks if “you guys actually enjoy treating your customers like dirt?” although the last word is an expletive that is bleeped out. Her indignant and inadvertently humorous rant — at one point she seems to refer to the country as the “Magnited States of America” — concludes with “Thanks for taking my money, jerk,” with the last word, again, being an expletive.

“You’re welcome!” responds text on the screen. “Thanks for not coming back to the Alamo, texter!”

Two versions of the good-riddance video — one with the caller’s profanity audible and another with bleeps — drew a combined total of more than 4.4 million views on YouTube, and the video was featured on dozens of popular Web sites, including Gawker, Perez Hilton and Salon.

It was also featured on “Anderson Cooper 360°” on CNN and on “The View” on ABC, where co-host Whoopi Goldberg said, “I love, love, love this — bravo Alamo theater.”

For the theater chain, which currently has 10 locations in Texas and in Winchester, Va., and is working on deals for new theaters in markets including New York and Los Angeles, the magnitude of the attention was unexpected, but welcomed.

“This certainly built awareness in a more significant way than we ever could have paid for,” said Mr. League.

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When Mr. League and his wife, Karrie, opened the first Alamo Drafthouse location in Austin in 1997, they were not motivated by love of cinema alone.

“Before we opened, we thought about all the things we hated about the movie-going experience,” Mr. League said.

The theaters do not show advertising before movies, because “our stance is you’ve paid for this movie and that entitles you to a commercial-free experience,” Mr. League said.

And because the Leagues had been annoyed by exorbitant concessions and unruly children, the Alamo has a full menu of reasonably priced food and alcoholic beverages and prohibits children under 6 from all but some G-rated movies and, for any movie, requires those under 18 to be accompanied by an adult.

Most theaters run announcements to refrain from talking or using cellphones, of course, but such requests are ignored — or worse.

During a screening of “Shutter Island” at a multiplex in Lancaster, Calif., last year, for example, after a man asked another audience member to stop talking on her cellphone — politely, according to witnesses — her boyfriend attacked him with a meat thermometer, landing the victim in the hospital in a coma and the assailant in prison with a conviction for attempted murder.

A representative of the National Association of Theater Owners told The Associated Press recently that around 2004, the organization investigated technology that would block cellphone signals in theaters, a proposition that, while supported by 60 percent of moviegoers, was so strongly opposed by the other 40 percent that the organization dropped it.

At the Alamo, patrons report talkers and texters anonymously to servers, using paper and pens provided to silently order food during movies. One warning is issued, and the next offense draws the boot.

About 150 people are kicked out annually for talking or using mobile devices at all of the locations combined, Mr. League said.

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The caller featured in the video did not leave her name and has not contacted the theater since, according to Mr. League, who said lawyers he consulted before releasing the video determined that using her voice, even without her permission, was legal.

After reviewing the video, Anthony Falzone, an intellectual property lawyer and lecturer at Stanford Law School, concurred. Even if the caller were to come forward now, she could not claim she was defamed, “because defamation must always be based on a false statement of fact” and, “unless they manipulated the recording,” the recording is truthful, Mr. Falzone said.

Also, leaving a voice mail for a business is not considered a private communication, meaning that the caller could not claim an invasion of privacy, said Mr. Falzone, adding that this was “yet another example that in this day and age there is a public record about everything you say publicly.”

Daniel Post Senning, a great-great-grandson of the etiquette icon Emily Post and a spokesman for the Emily Post Institute, said that while a few years ago texting was regarded as more considerate in social or professional settings than talking on a cellphone, with the exception of cases like texting on public transportation, that is rarely the case today.

“Texting is not necessarily a safe alternative to your cellphone where talking would not be appropriate,” said Mr. Post Senning, who lauded the Alamo policy.

“Other people are having their Friday night out and having a group of teenagers in front of them lighting up their phones could ruin that experience,” he said. “What’s amazing to me is the sense of entitlement, that, ‘This is a free country and I can text wherever I want.’ ”

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